Halo 4 franchise director Frank O'Connor has taken a postmortem-style look back at the game, concluding that 343 Industries first effort in filling the big shoes of departed developer Bungie "wasn't half bad," and helped the studio learn a few things for future iterations of the series.
Halo 4 is the beginning of the franchise's second trilogy, so it's not surprising that developer 343 Industries has already begun work on the sequel.
"Work on the game started actually before we launched Halo 4 and continues apace as we cycle staff through the team's vacation breaks," development director Frank O'Connor said. "A lot of people at 343 are already prototyping ideas and software and art for future Halo products."
The fifth episode of Halo 4's ongoing "Spartan Ops" co-op campaign has released today to satisfy your multiplayer itch. The new episode picks up right where the last left off, as the Spartans see increased enemy activity and start to suspect something is amiss.
Halo 3: ODST was one of Bungie's last games before separating from Microsoft to work on its next universe. Apparently, the company knew what it was planning for the future well in advance--so much so that it sneaked an easter egg into the now-three year old game.
343 Industries keeps rolling along with the cooperative Spartan Ops episodes in Halo 4, but those hungry for a refresh to the competitive multiplayer experience can now mark their calendars for December 10. That's the date that the first of three announced map packs will drop, bringing with it three new arenas and a new game type.
It's a new week, which means a new set of co-op missions for Halo 4's Spartan Ops mode. This week's missions revolve around the discovery of the Sangeheili terrorist known as "The Didact's Hand" on Requiem. And for those of you who like her, Catherine Halsey makes another appearance in the preview trailer.
The first season of Halo 4's Spartan Ops is pressing onward. The third episode is due next week, with five new chapters coming on Monday, November 19 at 3 AM PT. 343 Industries has released a new trailer for the upcoming episode.
Read more: A controversial doctor investigates the artifact »
We knew Halo 4 was going to be popular, and oh look, it is. "Consumer demand and excitement for Halo 4 is even greater than we anticipated," GameStop president Tony Bartel said in a Microsoft press release. "Day-one sales of Halo 4 make it the biggest Halo launch in GameStop history and the biggest game launch on any platform so far this year in our stores."
(Of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has yet to release in stores...)
Lore fans have probably already sped through the first episode of Spartan Ops in Halo 4. You can get ready for a second dose of Spartan Ops coming next week, and 343 has teased the upcoming episode with a new trailer.
Say, you wouldn't happen to be planning to play a lot of Halo 4, would you? If so, you're in luck, as Microsoft is offering a stack of free MS Points through its Xbox Live Rewards programme simply for playing the latest shooty-shoots. If you're not that bothered about Halo 4 and just want the free points, well, there are probably better uses for your time.
Halo 4 brings back a fan-favorite mode: Forge. This time around, the mode will feature three exclusive maps, each offering some much-need variety. Ravine is a lush green environment, similar in appearance to Halo 3's Valhalla. Erosion is a cavernous area located within a desert terrain, and Impact is set in an abandoned area in deep space filled with asteroids, craters, and UNSC facilities.
Dynamic lighting is a new addition to Forge that helps create a greater sense of immersion. Objects that are placed in outdoor areas will create realistic shadow effects. Shadows will appear in real-time through the map's natural light sources and also from the various artificial light pieces available.
Buzzwords like "platform" get tossed out a lot these days with major franchises. In business terms, it refers to the notion that a game can keep doling out content well after its release. Halo 4 wants to be more than a game, it wants to be a content hub that will be relevant for months and maybe even years to come.
The main tentpole in 343's attempt to transform the game into a "platform" is the new Spartan Ops mode--a replacement for Halo Reach's Firefights, featuring a series of discrete missions organized into 10-week seasons. Each mission is like an episode in a television series, only if that show released five episodes a week instead of one. That adds up to 50 episodes a season, and it's all free.
You can start throwing down in Halo 4 multiplayer matches tomorrow, but 343 Industries has already detailed a major update coming to the ranking system early next year. The "Competitive Skill Rank" system will assign you a skill rank, fully visible on your Waypoint profile, and use it to match you in games with opponents of comparable skill ranks.
The Halo universe can be bewildering at times. Like any good sci-fi franchise, it has its own vocabulary--Forerunners, the Flood, the Mantle, Reach. It also a lot of backstory, most of which has been parceled out in licensed books and other material over the years.
Is it even possible to get into Halo 4 without knowing about the original games? Should you be playing Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary first? Here's the case for both approaches.
With Halo 4 arriving on store shelves next week to start a new chapter in the series, it's time for another story to end. The fifth and final episode of live-action webseries Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn launched today, wrapping up the prequel story of a rag-tag group of space-cadets facing an alien invasion.
"If I haden't read Halo Cryptum before I played the game, I would have been confused. 343 brought ..."
- Prometheus117 See all 27 comments